Database and Journal Cancellations

Every year, Auraria Library reviews resource subscriptions and negotiates with publishers and vendors to provide access to databases and journals that will help students, faculty, instructors, and staff learn, teach, and research. Over 80% of the $3.6M Library Materials budget is allocated to ongoing journal packages and databases (subscriptions) that have 5-6% average increases from vendors each year. Strategies including price negotiations, memorandums of understanding (MOUs), small cancellations, and grants have been used to mitigate these annual increases; however, with our library materials budget remaining mostly unchanged for the past five years, Auraria Library needs to occasionally cancel subscriptions.

The price increases diminish our purchasing power and creates a severe imbalance in our effort to maintain access to everything our users need.

The primary goal of the library’s review and cancellation process is to determine which resources are not heavily used, which resources’ costs have risen at an unsustainable rate, and if needs on campus have changed. Before we cancel a resource, we try to gather feedback from students, staff, instructors, and faculty; however, sometimes time is short or funding from an outside source ends.

Information we review when deciding to renew or cancel a subscription:

The cost and price history of the journal.
The use of the journal over the most recent years.
Whether and where a journal is indexed.
Whether articles from a particular title can be obtained quickly and cheaply via interlibrary loan or by other means.
Campus interest in and opinion about the database or journal.
Accessibility of the resource.
Ethical concerns related to companies we can purchase the journal or database from.

Cancellations of resources can also allow us to subscribe to new databases and journals that will support current and new programs and initiatives on Auraria campus.